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It's true, you can't monkey around with gorilla warfare. The South could have aped the example of Spanish gorillas against Napoleon, which kept him from ever fully subduing the country. Southern gorillas would have driven a Union occupation army bananas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicet4
I am never going to hear the end of this, am I?
Nope...
Personally though I think that the Southern gorilla uprising would've been similar to this:
Gorilla warfare would have eventually bankrupted the north.
I think the 20th and 21st century has shown it is near impossible to occupy a foreign country unless the occupier is willing to go Genghis Khan on the locals.
What would an union occupation army have done if one million rebels had simply taken their weapons home to fight another day? Every time the union hangs a confederate for picking off a lone Yankee small gorilla forces would pick off three more Yankees.
Sounds to me like being a member of an occupying army would be pure hell. Never know when someone might shoot you in the back. Never feeling safe outside the gates of the local garrison and if the garrison was small not even then.
The Confederacy was all about the rich and their Slave Plantations, how wwould those have existed without holding territory?
too bad you ONLY know the propaganda nonsense that has been force fed to school kids by the Federalists ...
Go on and believe your politicians and their deceit ...
Comparable to the lies in the 60's about how Communists were not allowed to have religion ... yet there are many VERY old and active churches there.
and that is recent history not like history from well before communism which has conned so many into thinking they know something.
Please read the articles of secession. There were elite southern politicians openly admitting that slavery was one of the reasons. The majority of Whites did not own slaves. However, the ones that did were the most vocal about keeping their slaves. This was a war controlled by the elites, and fought by the people at the bottom. The White southerners who didn't own slaves, who were too poor to own slaves, the fight to secede was not their war to fight. As valiantly as they fought, they were being used by elites who didn't have their interests in mind. A big part of it was slavery, but it was fought by people who had no real stake in it, for people who couldn't care less. In many ways, the Civil War was a war of class as much as other issues. Using the poor when you need them and dumping them afterwards.
Please read the articles of secession. There were elite southern politicians openly admitting that slavery was one of the reasons. The majority of Whites did not own slaves. However, the ones that did were the most vocal about keeping their slaves. This was a war controlled by the elites, and fought by the people at the bottom. The White southerners who didn't own slaves, who were too poor to own slaves, the fight to secede was not their war to fight.
a certain proportion of non slaveowning white southerners were young people just starting out or poor folks who aspired to better. Or folks who made livings selling goods or services to plantations.
Think of the attitudes of non business owners or non homeowners today. I do not think it was the case that every non slave owning white southerner felt that they had no economic interest in slavery.
Please read the articles of secession. There were elite southern politicians openly admitting that slavery was one of the reasons. The majority of Whites did not own slaves. However, the ones that did were the most vocal about keeping their slaves. This was a war controlled by the elites, and fought by the people at the bottom. The White southerners who didn't own slaves, who were too poor to own slaves, the fight to secede was not their war to fight. As valiantly as they fought, they were being used by elites who didn't have their interests in mind. A big part of it was slavery, but it was fought by people who had no real stake in it, for people who couldn't care less. In many ways, the Civil War was a war of class as much as other issues. Using the poor when you need them and dumping them afterwards.
True and often overlooked.
But to rephrase the op's question a little. What if, knowing it was lost, they'd simply surrendered before the final battles, and quietly started life over? Perhaps just after Sherman. But while the elites might have been seriously compromised, the poor were still poor. The slaves were freed. But those who hadn't had a stake in it but did now, as they got squeezed by the occupation, resisted? Quiet resistance won't win a major battle, but it will keep the emeny watching constantly and become more repressive against a wider selection of people. And it feeds on itself. Would it have changed the way it settled after the armies were done by preventing the power structure of the elite from returning, or, their interests with themselves, would they have turned on the underclass themselves?
Remember afterwards poor white share cropers and poor black share croppers shared the same sort of life except for the color of their skin. In a sense the elite DID win, since they reclaimed their power base in time and in a way which was sustainable over the long haul unlike using slaves would have been.
a certain proportion of non slaveowning white southerners were young people just starting out or poor folks who aspired to better. Or folks who made livings selling goods or services to plantations.
Think of the attitudes of non business owners or non homeowners today. I do not think it was the case that every non slave owning white southerner felt that they had no economic interest in slavery.
Secessionists were and are traitors, I get a real kick out of the Pledging Alliegence to the United States while threatening to take up arms against it. As far as I am concerned an armed militiaman with a Confederate flag was or is an enemy combatant.
Please read the articles of secession. There were elite southern politicians openly admitting that slavery was one of the reasons. The majority of Whites did not own slaves. However, the ones that did were the most vocal about keeping their slaves. This was a war controlled by the elites, and fought by the people at the bottom. The White southerners who didn't own slaves, who were too poor to own slaves, the fight to secede was not their war to fight. As valiantly as they fought, they were being used by elites who didn't have their interests in mind. A big part of it was slavery, but it was fought by people who had no real stake in it, for people who couldn't care less. In many ways, the Civil War was a war of class as much as other issues. Using the poor when you need them and dumping them afterwards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boompa
The Articles of Confederation address Slavery more than a dozen times.
I suppose they are nonsense too.
it was BECAUSE THE SLAVE WAS A TAXED PROPERTY - not because they wanted to free them.
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Sorry couldn't resist.
